Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Hansel & Gretel’ Conquer the Competition

Make no mistake: this was a slow and bad weekend at the box office, an example of the January doldrums at their absolute worst. However, this was probably the only environment where a film titled ‘Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters‘ could have flourished, so at least someone is happy.

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

1

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

$19,000,000

$5,635

$19,000,000

2

Mama

$12,860,000 (-54.7)

$4,795

$48,648,000

3

Silver Linings Playbook

$10,000,000 (-7.0)

$3,786

$69,465,000

4

Zero Dark Thirty

$9,800,000 (-38.0)

$3,346

$69,904,000

5

Parker

$7,00,000

$3,147

$7,000,000

6

Django Unchained

$5,005,000 (-35.5)

$2,494

$146,295,000

7

Movie 43

$5,000,000

$2,472

$5,000,000

8

Gangster Squad

$4,200,000 (-51.4)

$1,622

$39,647,000

9

Broken City

$4,000,000 (-51.6)

$1,526

$15,270,000

10

Les Miserables

$3,912,000 (-47.8)

$1,777

$137,237,000

There’s already plenty of chatter going around the online world about how the $19 million opening weekend for ‘Hansel & Gretel’ is “soft,” but let’s be perfectly honest with ourselves here: this movie is a disaster and it’s very obviously a disaster. No one was actually excited for this movie and this gross represents desperate people wanting to see something (as well as those hoping for a good laugh at the film’s expense). The fact that it opened this high is shocking. So, uh, good for it?

In second place, ‘Mama‘ took the patented 50% horror movie drop, but with nearly $50 million in the bank, it’s already a big hit by the standards of its genre. The only question now is whether or not ‘Mama 2′ will be a theatrical release or straight-to-DVD fare.

Third and fourth place belong to ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ both of which are dealing with the whole “wide release” thing quite well. Both have grossed $69 million and both look like pretty serious contenders for $100 million. So that’s what a bunch of Oscar nomination and months of critical buzz can do for your movie…

In fifth place, ‘Parker‘ did what Jason Statham movies tend to do: it bombed. $7 million is an ugly opening and after last week’s dismal start for ‘The Last Stand,’ it looks like audiences are tired of tough guys with distinctive accents beating people up for 90 minutes. At least ‘Parker’ opened bigger than ‘Movie 43,’ which limped into seventh place with a $5 million opening.

As for the rest…

‘Django Unchained‘ should cross $150 million next week and will probably peter out around $165 million in the coming weeks. In any case, it’s already the biggest film of Quentin Tarantino’s career by several leaps and bounds. ‘Gangster Squad‘ and ‘Broken City’ continued to be non-events, films destined to stack up, forever unsold, at your local used DVD store. And finally, ‘Les Miserables’ is poised to exit the top ten with $137 million in the bank. There’s a chance it’ll cling on long enough on the fringes to hit $150 million, but it’s been a terrific run.

Next week, Sylvester Stallone will continue the trend started by ‘The Last Stand’ and ‘Parker’ with ‘Bullet to the Head’ and ‘Warm Bodies’ will attempt to grab some of that precious, precious ‘Twilight’ money.

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